Jun. 25th, 2014

Jun. 25th, 2014

This post brought to you by that one post going around saying to tag sarcasm for autistic people:

No, tag sarcasm for people with a low threshold for Poe’s law. Some of those people are autistic. Plenty of autistic people can usually identify sarcasm and satire. Plenty of allistic people can’t. Everyone sometimes messes it up. That’s the whole reason ‘Poe’s law’ is a concept: everybody’s coming into conversation from a different context, and no one can always tell what that person would think is a reasonable opinion to express.

Stop spreading condescending posts framing things as ‘do this for people with $specific_disability so you will be the Understanding Able Person’ when plenty of people without it would benefit and plenty of people with it would not. I guarantee you that for any accommodation you can think of, there is someone who would never in their life identify as disabled who could benefit. It’s also likely that that plenty of people who you might think would need that specific accommodation would find it completely useless. People are different and disability is a complicated thing.

If it is helpful for you specifically to have a thing tagged? Say so. You’re a person, too, and you don’t need to generalise for it to be more valid.

And there is this huuuuuuuuge tendency for people to reblog every ‘please tag #trigger’ post they see as a self-congratulatory backpat that’s coupled with neglecting certain other very straightforward accessibility concerns. Namely, keep your tumblr layout neat and readable, your background static (no gifs) and uncluttered behind your text, your colour-scheme simple and not involving extremely saturated colours, your autoplay off or nonexistent (so, remove the ‘auto’ from your ‘autoplay’), your font size legible, your images described (link is to a blind dreamwidth user’s suggestions for helpful alt text), and if you don’t have time & energy to transcribe audio and video, at least label them. If not? You’re being about as generally helpful as that one kid who’d made a completely useless braille printer out of legos. Tagging every single picture with a face in it ‘scopophobia’ isn’t going to start meaning your blog’s accessible.

And as before, these are all things that aren’t specific to people with disabilities! Some people have slow internet connections, or limited bandwidth. Tumblr mobile doesn’t always load images. Audio and video posts often won’t play at all no matter what you do. If you don’t have the energy or time to describe them extensively, label it in a few words that at least give enough context to let someone know if they want to check it later, or have someone else check it.

Diagnostically, there definitely seems to be a vague venn diagram-like crossover when it comes to certain external trait presentations amongst the disorders listed above.

For example take an extended burst of high energy over 24 hours:

An autistic person spends 24 hours working on a painting because they are in “hyperfocus” mode and they feel a compelling urge to finish before they can sleep. They paint frantically for 24 hours until they feel it is a satisfactory product.

A Bipolar person spends 24 hours working on a painting because they are in “mania” mode and they feel a compelling urge to paint as much as they can before they can sleep. They paint frantically for 24 hours until they feel they have finally run out of energy and cannot paint anymore.

An ADHD person spends 24 hours working on a painting because they cannot sleep. Painting keeps them focused and gives them a creative outlet for their energy. They paint frantically for 24 hours until they feel they have exhausted themselves enough to get to sleep.

An obsessive-compulsive person spends 24 hours working on a painting because they are in “perfectionist” mode and they feel a compelling urge to paint as much as they can before they can sleep. They paint frantically for 24 hours until they feel they have finally run out of energy and cannot paint anymore and they have produced a product that is satisfactory enough to allow them to sleep.

A Borderline person spends 24 hours working on a painting because they are going through an emotional “upswing” and painting helps them process their emotions. They paint frantically for 24 hours because they have poor impulse control and cannot manage their time or their emotions effectively.*

In autistic individuals it’s known as “hyperfocus”

In bipolar individuals it’s known as “mania”

In ADHD individuals it’s known as “hyperactivity”

In OCD individuals it’s known as “perseveration” or “perfectionism”

In Borderline individuals it’s known as “impulse control problems”*

These can all be potential symptom descriptions for the same thing.

These traits and characterists can easily overlap with different diagnoses. There are variations in mood and presentation (the bipolar person in mania mode might be painting more “happily” because they are simply expending energy while the OCD person might be painting more “fearfully / angrily” because they do not want to get it “wrong”)

Depending on who is diagnosing you, they may choose one or more than one of the three to describe the same traits and behaviours. The important difference is the context of the event. What takes place before the state of 24-hour painting and what comes after. This will help you and your doctor to figure out which diagnosis is the most applicable.

This doesn’t mean that the diagnoses are 100% interchangeable, just that there are definite overlaps in similarities. A diagnosis of one is often not too far away from a diagnosis of the other, because of the clustering effect of symptoms. This is neither good nor bad. If you feel you have been misdiagnosed, keep track of the symptoms you think more closely fit a proper diagnosis and discuss this with your doc.

*Notice how the borderline description is far more negative than the other more neutral ones? The symptoms are all describing the same thing, yet borderline is the only one listed as “problematic”. Psychology can be incredibly dickish.

ME: ugh i hate the last part of the work day it sucks so muchGENERIC OTHER PERSON: yeah, totally. you get so bored and all you can thinkabout is the latest episode of orange is the new black.ME: ...if by 'bored' you mean 'upset' and if by 'the latest episode oforange is the new black' you mean how awful life is and how terrible youare, then yeah, totally. that.hashtag mkp whines a lothashtag fuck you existentialismvia:Tumblr http://ift.tt/1lU3XU9

COWORKER: hey, what'd you do to this monitor?ME: I stacked it on top of some binders.COWORKER: yeah, I can see that. I mean *why.*ME: ...ohhhhh.hashtag mkp isn't neurotypicalvia:Tumblr http://ift.tt/1lU42am